Delphine Dryden - Gossamer Wing

As she neared the old ship, Charlotte considered what to do next. Slipping her craft beneath the freighter, she observed the layout of the dock before maneuvering to one end of it and coming closer to the surface. Despite the risk of being seen, she raised the periscope and surveyed the dock and the freight yard beyond, hoping for something to confirm she was in the right place.

Right there . The periscope, more sensitive than the human eye, picked up the outline of a man crouching between two shipping containers. Charlotte fiddled with the focus and gave her eyes a moment to make sense of the dark scene; after a short time, she was able to make out more details. A pair of binoculars aimed at the ship, a portable radio communicator slung over the man’s shoulder on a broad strap.

As she watched, he took a tiny spider-car from a pouch, then whipped a weighted cable around his head like bolas, finally letting it fly in an arc toward the ship. A moment later, he sent the car zipping up the line. Charlotte assumed it carried a beacon or transmitter of some kind.

The memory of Dexter showing her the gadget’s prototype made her throat tighten, and Charlotte had to force her mind back to the dilemma at hand. Lowering the periscope, she spent a minute trying to visualize the interior plan of a cargo ship before tilting her sub down again and swinging underneath the massive hull.

“All right, Jacques Martin. If I were an insane former spy bent on wrongdoing, where on this thing would I hide my prisoner?”

After picking a possible location more or less at random, Charlotte set out to recall how to operate the sub’s listening system. The trick was to place the “ear” in such a way that it attached to the hull silently—a matter of the proper finesse with the controls for the automatonic arm on which the microphone was attached—and then used the hull itself as a sort of speaker, channeling sound from within the vessel.

Charlotte had watched the technician demonstrate the controls for the listening device’s extension arm, but it was harder than it looked. At first she couldn’t get the arm moving at all, then she found herself confused about up and down, and ended up shooting the thing straight out and into the hull.

She winced and waited, praying that the acoustic padding on the ear’s exterior kept it from clanging when it struck the ship.

A minute went by, then two, and when nothing happened she gingerly took the controls and tried again.

This time she managed to position the arm properly and bring the ear to lie flat against the hull as the technician had shown her, but the telephonic earpiece inside the ship remained silent but for a few creaking noises.

Charlotte tried tweaking the volume and sensitivity controls, but all she accomplished was half-deafening herself with the same echoing creaks.

Another spot, then . She retracted the arm and turned back to the sub’s instrument panel. Her hands trembled and she had to put her head down on the steering rig for a moment while a wave of dizzy fear swept over her. She was hyperventilating again, she realized, and forced herself to control her breathing until the tingling, numb lightheadedness passed and she could once again handle the controls.

Time was passing, and Dexter was inside that ship somewhere with a madman, and so far she had been no help at all.

MARTIN HAD PLANNED to beat Hardison first, to assert his dominance and apply a healthy dose of pain and fear. It was a crude method of establishing control, and not his first choice, but he knew he was on a short timetable.

When it came time, however, he was mortified to realize he was far too weak to do the thing at all, much less do it properly. And Hardison was a brute, a big village blacksmith of a man, not an effete aristocrat; he would take more than the standard beating, unless Martin missed his guess. A few taps wouldn’t affect him at all.

The last of the tranquilizer was wearing off too, Martin could tell. Hardison’s questions were growing more pointed and he was alert, scanning his surroundings when he thought Martin wasn’t looking. He’d given up his earlier effort to force his way out of the knots, but from the slight movements of his arms Martin deduced he was still working at his bonds as he spoke.

The knots would hold, Martin wasn’t concerned about that. But Hardison was dangerous, even lashed to a chair. Martin needed leverage, which he didn’t have.

“What do you want with me?” the man finally asked.

“Once we get to our destination,” Martin said, making a show of checking his watch, “I’ll be taking you to a medical facility where my men will supervise as you do some maintenance on my arm. We should arrive in a few hours.”

I’ll use my last dose of tranquilizer on you, move you to the cargo bay where the operating theater is set up and hope Claude and Jean-Louis show up when they’re supposed to.

“Maintenance?” Hardison sounded skeptical. “Implants are hardly my specialty. I’m not a surgeon-engineer.”

“This will be simple,” Martin assured him. “Merely removing something that never should have been there in the first place. Nothing integral to the function of the arm.”

Perhaps he really can do it. Take the poison vial out but leave the arm in place .

“You’re ill,” said his prisoner bluntly. “Too ill to take anesthetic.”

Martin clenched his teeth. The man was no doctor, how would he know? “It’s an infection. A reaction to the implants. Not uncommon.”

“Your face, your hand . . . they’re bright pink, you know. The skin on your palm is peeling. You’re in a constant sweat, and you can barely stand. In the past few minutes you seem to have started struggling for air,” Hardison pointed out. “Your speech is beginning to slur. This is no infection, nor is it a reaction to the implants. I think we both know what this is, and that there’s nothing I can do to stop it.”

The man seemed to realize only after the fact what a risk he’d taken, detailing the situation to Martin that way. His chin came up, belligerent, daring his captor to take issue with what he’d said.

Martin looked down at his hand, turning it over and examining the palm where, just as Hardison said, skin was peeling off in flakes and translucent white curls. He was dying by inches, disintegrating one very thin layer at a time.

“We both know what this is? Suppose you tell me, monsieur.”

He knew what he would hear before the Makesmith Baron spoke.

“Poison. Mercuric cyanide, if I had to guess. I saw a chemical metallurgist die of it once, although in his case it took months. All from a single accidental drop on his skin. The symptoms were the same, however, and they’re quite distinctive. I’m . . . I’m sorry for you.”

He was sorry, Martin could tell. Naïve though the sentiment seemed, it made a difference. Martin hadn’t believed Dubois, hadn’t even quite believed himself. He believed Dexter Hardison, though, about both the poison and the sympathy.

It really is over .

“This was more than just a drop, I suspect,” he said softly, with a wry smile.

THE NEXT ATTEMPT to place the listening ear had gone more smoothly than the first, but Charlotte still heard nothing when she bent to the earpiece. It made the sound of the ocean, nothing more.

“Damn it!”

The craving to pilot the sub upward again, crack the surface and swing the hatch up, was almost too great to resist. The cabin seemed so small she could barely move inside it now. The atmosphere was thick and heavy with fear. Her fingertips tingled constantly, buzzing with tension from her taut shoulders and her ongoing struggle to keep from hyperventilating into unconsciousness. Her head was throbbing, stomach churning, and Charlotte thought if she ever escaped the submersible she would never, never allow herself to be put into such a tiny enclosure again. She would live on her front lawn, if need be, weather and elements be damned.